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How To Use An iPad/iPod/iPhone As An External Monitor
Mar 11, 2025
A quick demo of using an iPad as an external monitor for OS X.
View Video Transcript
0:06
hey everyone today I'm going to show you
0:07
how you can use your iPad as an external
0:08
monitor for your Mac so first of all
0:11
what you're going to have to do is open
0:12
up the app store on your iPad and
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download this simple application called
0:16
I display and it's $4.99 in the App
0:18
Store relatively cheap for what it does
0:22
once you download that you're going to
0:23
need to head over to your Mac and go to
0:25
shapes services.com
0:27
slid display and what you need to do
0:30
here is you're going to need to download
0:32
the desktop version of the software for
0:35
Mac OS which is the link right here and
0:39
you need two things running so you need
0:40
the client running on your computer as
0:43
well as your iPad to make them run
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together so you're going to download
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whatever version you need to um either
0:49
for leopard or snow leopard it works
0:51
with
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both and then you're going to need to
0:55
install I
0:57
display so just run the install
1:00
and it's a pretty simple process now
1:03
when you install it it's going to warn
1:05
you that after you finish installing the
1:08
software you're going to have to restart
1:11
your computer so once it finishes up
1:13
I'll restart the computer and be right
1:16
back so now I've rebooted my computer
1:18
and now I can go into my applications
1:20
folder and you'll see I display right
1:23
here and I can open this up and it's
1:27
nothing comes up on the screen right
1:28
away it just lives in your menu bar and
1:30
you can see it just gives you a menu
1:33
right here and it's running and that's
1:35
all there is to it you don't have to
1:37
worry about it or you know configure
1:39
anything it's really a quite simple app
1:43
once you know how to use it so the next
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thing you're have to do is go over to
1:48
your iPad and then run
1:50
the ey display app that's on your iPad
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so I'll just open it up here and you can
1:57
see on my iMac screen now unknown device
2:00
is attempting to connect to ey display
2:02
on this computer and it says Ms iPad I
2:04
can allow this I could deny it or I
2:06
could always allow it so I'm going to
2:07
always allow it because I probably want
2:09
to connect more than once and now you
2:12
can see my Mac you know adjusted its
2:15
display and my iPad is acting as an
2:17
external display so now what I can do is
2:20
I can go up and look at the ey display
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menu and you can see it's yellow now
2:25
indicating that there's a display
2:26
attached and I can click organize
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displays
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and it's going to open up system
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preferences and show me the display
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panel and now you'll see that there is
2:37
three displays attached that it shows
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and you can see on my iPad there is a
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display now um
2:45
attached so I'm going to click gather
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all windows and I'm going to bring them
2:48
all back over here onto the mac and I'm
2:52
going to set this up so that everything
2:54
is configured how it should be so if you
2:57
look here you can see on my Mac I have
3:00
the displays arranged how they are
3:02
currently so you can see I have my IMAX
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monitor followed by my secondary display
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that's connected to my computer and then
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right here my iPad so right now my iPad
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is resting right below my iMac so I can
3:15
just move it over here and it's about
3:18
right there so I can just set it like
3:20
that and now you can see my dock is
3:23
actually on my iPad because of the
3:26
relation to where it is into my Mac and
3:29
and it's directly underneath so it's
3:31
acting as the dock space and you can see
3:34
I can drag Windows onto the iPad and
3:37
drag them off and it's a little bit
3:39
laggy because it relies heavily on the
3:42
speed of your network
3:44
connection um so it's a little bit
3:46
choppy and obviously the faster Network
3:50
you have the faster it'll go um but it's
3:54
usable now it's not something you're
3:56
going to want to play video on because
3:58
of the refresh rate it would look pretty
4:00
bad U but it's perfect for running
4:02
something like a Twitter client so you
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can see I've brought Twitter over here
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and it can just sit here and provide me
4:08
with updates and it's very useful for
4:11
something like that or perhaps if you
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have an iTunes you know uh thing set up
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and you want it to have it open and
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active but you don't want it to be
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taking up the uh space on your main
4:20
display um so you know not good for
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video type things uh but it is good uh
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for things that you just kind of want to
4:28
keep track of
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little applications like that and I
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should also mention that just like any
4:35
other external display you can also
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change the desktop of it you can see I
4:39
can choose any desktop I want now it's
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set just like my other monitors are and
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uh it looks just like you'd expect it to
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so a couple things about I display it's
4:49
not going to replace your main monitor
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by any means and that's obvious because
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it's supposed to be a secondary monitor
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uh and if you have a secondary monitor
4:58
hooked up it's probably not going to
5:00
replace that either just because of the
5:01
slow refresh rate um but it is good like
5:04
I mentioned for things like a Twitter
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feed or iTunes or things like that and
5:08
it really does open up a a new world of
5:11
possibilities uh for your iPad for
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example I can't drive three monitors
5:16
with my iMac now with this I can I can
5:19
have two external displays plus my main
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one well maybe not as useful and
5:24
definitely not as big as a regular
5:27
external monitor would be it gives me
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that added function ality that I can
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really take advantage of if I do things
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like that um if you had Photoshop and
5:35
you have a lot of different windows open
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you could store some of them on here
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just for quick easy access uh just
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another example there really are a lot
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of endless possibilities with this and
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it works on your iPhone as well um
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probably even a little bit less useful
5:49
but still a very cool application and uh
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you only $5 it works pretty well and
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it's very simple and easy to set up as
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I've showed you here and that's really
6:00
all there is to it I haven't had any
6:02
issues with this and as updates come out
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uh the speed of it continues to get
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faster it used to be quite a bit slower
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um it's improved greatly from what it
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used to be like and it seems to be just
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getting better and better along as it
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goes so so that's about all I hope you
6:18
found this video useful and thank you
6:20
for
6:25
watching
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